Archive: Heavy Metal

Manowar is an American Heavy Metal band from Auburn, NY, USA, formed in 1980. No long introduction needed. It doesn’t matter if you love or hate them (both sides have valid points), you still do know them.

This article is about the cover to their 2007 release “Gods of War”. It’s the first of a series of concept albums dedicated to different war gods from various mythologies. “Gods of War“ is centered around Odin, King of Gods and primary god of war in the Norse Mythology. All of the text on the booklet was written in the runic alphabet as well as the album’s titel on the cover (source). The cover art was done by Ken Kelly, who has also worked on artworks for Kiss, Coheed & Cambria, Rainbow as well as the most famous barbarian in fiction – Conan.

Talking about Metal imagery demands also some talking about the image of the Metalhead itself. And by „head“, we mean the „head“. Because ever since BLACK SABBATH the most common hairstyle in Metal is a symmetric one – the centre parting.

As almost everything in Metal goes back to the Birmingham foursome, we shouldn’t hesitate giving SABBATH the credit for the centre parting as well. Of course, this hair style has existed long before Metal, but it was them who brought it into the scene. For good!

Senior citizens among our readers may remember the 2nd half of the 80ies as a time when the common make up in Metal wasn’t corpse paint but RATTish lipstick and mascara. Nevertheless, there were still some nice, goat worshipping Black and Death Metal bands lurking in the worldwide underground, following the paths of CELTIC FROST/HELLHAMMER, BATHORY, POSSESSED or VENOM.

And some of our readers may also remeber how striking it was, to see the logo of bands like MESSIAH or SARCOFAGO for the first time. Or later the ones of MAYHEM, PENTAGRAM, ROOT, MASTER’S HAMMER (check out their site with all their demos!), GROTESQUE or TREBLINKA. Satanic imagery in its most symmetric and therefore most efficient form. Sometimes raw and primitive, but always balanced, iconic and – back then – a tiny little bit dangerous.

Mastodon is an American Heavy Metal band from Atlanta, USA, formed in 1999. They have released five full-length albums to date. The video featured in this post was made for the song Spectrelight (featuring Scott Kelly of Neurosis) from their latest release The Hunter.

The video uses a kaleidoscope effect to generate symmetric patterns and images out of a few pictures. It was released about 500 hours before The Hunter was released (Sept. 27, 2011) (source). That might be the reason why the video feels like a teaser to the album and its visual content. Documented in the cover art of The Hunter – a sculpture made by AJ Fosik – being a repetitive image in the video.